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As I finished my final class on Thursday, I had to wait just 6 hours until I would sit in the theatre and experience a film that I’ve been waiting 10 years for.

I kept trying to figure out a way to start this review, but for some reason, I can’t. This movie is almost too big to coherently collect my thoughts just a few hours after seeing it. I was speechless and at the edge of tears for nearly half an hour as the odds on biggest film of the year and possibly all time, ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Came to a close.

But after a second viewing, I’ve realized that a way to get my jumbled-up thoughts onto paper is to categorize them. So, let’s kick this off. And I’m not holding back on spoilers.

What Surprised Me

The deaths. I sent out a tweet right after I got out of the theatre saying that my one-word review of this film is, ‘ambitious’ and that’s because of the outcome of many of this film’s main characters. At the end of the film, we see Thanos complete his mission of collecting all of the Infinity Stones, with the sacrifice of his own daughter and Guardian of the Galaxy, Gamora.

In my favorite scene of the film, Thor sinks his new ax deep into Thanos’ chest, and Thanos says through a wicked grin, “You should have went for the head,” and he snaps his fingers, just like in the original source material and destroys half of all life in the universe. Moments later some of our favorite heroes start reducing to dust and every single person in my theatre was stunned.

There was a moment when fan favorite, Black Panther started reducing to dust and a person in the theatre audibly yelled out, cursing at the screen. This sequence which had no music behind it was extremely eerie and shocking in a beautifully vindictive way.

A lot of our favorite heroes were just straight up dying and the movie ends on that cliffhanger. I called it ambitious because we don’t know if any of these characters like Spiderman, Black Panther, Scarlet Witch and many others are ever gonna come back. I mean they will be revived because Spiderman and Black Panther made like 2 billion dollars and are both scheduled for second movies, but right now they are dead. Our heroes lost and that’s never happened before.

Even though this is called ‘Avengers: Infinity War’, this is Thanos’ movie at its core. Marvel has been building Thanos for ten years and in this movie, he cemented himself as the greatest villain in the MCU, which has had villain problems in previous films. Josh Brolin, who voices and did the motion capture for Thanos brings an entirely new personality to the character from what comic fans are used to.

In the comics, Thanos has no emotion, he cares for no one but himself, and is hell-bent on destruction to appease the female embodiment of death, Lady Death. In the film he is very different, his obsession with Lady Death is never mentioned and instead wants to wipe out half of the universe to basically purify it, to keep the population down so that there is a balance. That’s very different and some hardcore fans might dislike it, but I think the emotion that Brolin put into this emotionless character was needed for him to succeed in this film universe. He genuinely cares for his step-daughter Gamora, which made the fact that he sacrificed her to obtain the soul stone all the more heart-wrenching. If Thanos was just a destructive monster, like Steppenwolf in “Justice League”, I wouldn’t care about the deaths of the Avengers as much as I did.

The fact that he has a soul and personality allows him to be a nearly perfect villain because the best villains in movies are the ones that you can almost agree with and almost care about and that’s exactly what Josh Brolin did with the Mad Titan, Thanos.

What I Wanted More Of

This is probably going to be the highest grossing film of all time because not only was is a visual spectacle but the scope of it was almost unbelievable. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo, had to work with most of the biggest stars on the planet and had to fit all the storylines that have been going on for 10 years into one cohesive movie. With the sheer amount of heroes and actors in this film, screen time was limited for each character to have their individual moments but the pacing of this film by the Russo brothers was stunning. There was never a lull, every scene was either important to the story or a patented Marvel Studios quip.

But even though the pacing was pretty much perfect, there were times when I wanted to see more of one character rather than others. I wanted more Captain America. Last time we saw Cap was Civil War where he was on the run from authorities and hiding in Wakanda. Every scene in this film that Cap was in was amazing. I think I took for granted how good Chris Evans has been as Captain America and how important he is in these films.

I wanted more backstory of what he, Black Widow, and Falcon were doing since Civil War and I absolutely wanted more interaction between him and Thanos. The climactic Lord of the Rings-esque battle in Wakanda, where Cap, many other Avengers, and the warriors of Wakanda, try their hardest to hold off Thanos and his forces can only be described as one of the most epic battle scenes in the MCU, and in this same movie Thanos throws a moon at Iron Man, I mean c’mon, I can’t gush enough about how just purely epic this film is.

This section of things where I wanted to see more of usually means only positive things, but one thing that needs to be addressed in this film is the power scaling of its characters. By power scaling, I mean how powerful characters are compared to others. The thing that really perplexed me was how a human with no powers like Black Widow or Falcon is able to take a punch or kick from members of Thanos’ Black Order. In the film, these are the heralds of Thanos who are very powerful creatures from space. I don’t understand how Black Widow can survive a hit from Proxima Midnight, one of the members of the Black Order. Maybe this is the comic book nerd in me nitpicking the hell out of this minor detail, but it’s definitely something that had me perplexed.

What I Wanted Less Of

Nebula. She sucks and steals screen time from better characters.

And the CGI, while amazing during a majority of the film, it lacked consistency when it came to the Black Order, who were all CGI characters. They had a very rubbery look and that sometimes made them seem less menacing than they should have.

Verdict

This film is a feat of unimaginable movie making. The culmination of ten years and nearly 20 films, it is a spectacle of storytelling and stunning visuals. In 2012 we thought seeing the Avengers come together was something that couldn’t be topped, but for the Russo brothers and Marvel Studios to pull off this many beloved characters all in one film is something that will go down in the history books right next to films like Star Wars and The Godfather.

At this moment it has already broken box office records and it might end up being the biggest movie of all time, of course until it’s sequel, the untitled Avengers 4 hits theatres.

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